


The Witching Hour

by randommindtime



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Happy, Insight into Rodney's Mind, M/M, comfortable, hopeful, idk what to tag this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 01:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8470507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randommindtime/pseuds/randommindtime
Summary: Rodney wondered if the Universe was as cruel as it appeared or if it was just waiting for something (or someone).





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just something that came to mind the other day when I was contemplating a drawing. I hope you enjoy!

Rodney never believed in magic, even when he was just a kid. He could specifically remember sitting in a grumpy manner in front of the hired clown at a birthday party when he was 5, pointing out all of the errors in the tricks and loudly stating the absurdity of it all. The clown had yelled at him and Rodney had kicked it in the shin and the chaos that ensued might explain why he now dreamed of clowns next to whales that threatened to eat him whole. 

He’d first heard the term “the witching hour” from his mother one Halloween while they sat carving pumpkins at the kitchen table. Jeannie had listened with rapt attention, happy to get lost in fantasy, but no matter how animated his mother got, Rodney never bought into it - this ‘mystical moment’ around 3am when all of existence apparently held in a collective breath and went still, when anything was possible as if all the laws of the universe ceased working. Rodney knew better than to put faith in things you couldn’t see (or at least, that’s what he would tell you out loud).

Rodney never believed in magic but he did come to believe in that moment.

It first happened when he was 8. Rodney had snuck out of his bedroom window one blustery Fall night and carefully padded down to the edge of the lake on his family’s 2-acre property. He despised the slick, dewy grass and the bitter chill of the air, but had sat down anyway so he could look up at the stars, uninterrupted and alone. It didn’t take long for him to feel the thrill of the illicit evening ghost up his neck and down his spine, as if existence was mothering him along, wind shushing away his usually frantic thoughts on reality - the fear over the uncertainty of his parent’s marriage or his failing piano lessons or his inability to make friends. A quick gust of air had rushed past him and across the lake, rippling the water and the leaves and then…nothing. No crickets. No owls. No planes in the sky or cars on the roads. The silence settled around him like someone had turned off everything in the world except himself. It had been the first moment in his life that Rodney had realized reality was not at all what it seemed, that it was complex and hidden and generally so understated that no one in day-to-day life questioned it. Not many people were up at 3am, let alone 8-year-old geniuses that would one day travel through space and time, and Rodney wondered if the universe was secretly speaking to him, beckoning him to come along on an adventure of thrilling discovery. 

He’d think about that moment a lot as he abandoned music and saw his family fracture, as he chased the undefined mysteries of the universe like they could soothe away some of the hurt that had embedded itself under his skin. Unfortunately, holding onto childhood ideals seemed to only hurt him more and after years of little comfort or lasting satisfaction, Rodney started to wondered if the universe had just been teasing him that night, if it could all be that cruel.

25 years later, Rodney discovered that on Atlantis, 3am was usually a time reserved for catching your breath between shutting down this overloading ancient system or fending off that mind-altering virus that threatened to wipe them all out. It was the moment at night when he couldn’t stop his brain from thinking about all of the horrors he had witnessed - when he realized he was still afraid of the dark after a nanovirus almost exploded his brain and when life sucking aliens came to his doorstep and people he had started to consider family died terrible deaths. 3am was harsh and unforgiving in the Pegasus Galaxy and Rodney wondered if his old fears of existence were not only true but proof positive now, despite lacking that last and critical data point.

It took 2.5 years of living in a floating extraterrestrial city before one evening, out on an abandoned pier with John and a 6-pack, Rodney felt that specific gentle moment return and realized that maybe some emotions could travel across galaxies.

They had been between rants, coming to the natural end of discussing whether they’d ever find an alien equivalent of Funyuns or Starbursts (mass processed junk food seemed to be solely an Earth thing at the moment), when a harsh breeze had pushed past them, rushing around Rodney’s sides, through the thin layer of his over shirt, and out across the ‘Lantean ocean. For a moment, the waves seemed to quiet down and the low hum of the ancient city dipped below perception. Even John’s breath, which Rodney had come to listen to like a safety blanket or his own pulse, disappeared to barely a whisper, and he had to glance over briefly just to make sure John’s chest was still rising. Satisfied that this wasn’t some weird alien influence, Rodney looked up at the stars and felt a stillness that transported him back to wet grass and idealism in 1970s Canada. The younger part of his mind wondered if the most critical data point was really more of a predestined landing-place than a supportive piece of information. 

He shivered and John gave him a look.

“Cold?”

“No, its…its like the witching hour started or something...” he mumbled.

John stared at him, incredulously. “You believe in that?”

“Of course not - not literally, I’m not an imbecile,” Rodney had snapped, eyes coming back down from the sky. “I just mean that it felt like everything suddenly…paused for a moment… I haven’t felt that in years…”

There was a beat as the sound of waves returned to Rodney’s senses.

“You’re telling me you never felt that before?”

John thought for a moment, taking a swing of his beer.

“Cockpit,” John divulged around a swallow. “Over Afghanistan.”

Rodney angling his head towards John as he absently flicked at the tab of the beer can, waiting for him to continue. John took note of the sound, watching Rodney’s hands as he gathered his thoughts.

“You know when you’re on a commercial flight how everything gets drowned out by the white noise of the engines and air rushing past?”

Rodney nodded faintly, watching John with a casual attention he seemed to have leeched off of the Colonel over the past 3 years.

“Well, when you’re alone in a cockpit, especially flying routine stealth recognizance, you can…I don’t know, lose yourself sometimes. Feel almost like…time is skipping, like a record.”

John took another sip of his beer, eyes fixing up at the stars and Rodney waited, not wanting to interrupt. The pier had become their safe place, where they’d learned any story could be told without judgement. It was also where Rodney practiced not talking, letting silence wash over him in a way that had always scared the crap out of him in the past. It wasn’t easy, but he was learning to relax, especially around John. It was safe with John.

“I was doing stealth reconnaissance of a compound in, ah…hell, I guess August 2002?” John ran a hand through his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp as if he could dislodge the memory. “It’s not really important, I guess. I just remember that as I was doing a pass over the southern border of this area, I was hanging just above the clouds for cover and there was a full moon and with all that white noise… I don’t know, the clouds can just stretch on for miles and miles sometimes when you’re flying, as far as you can see with the endless dark sky and stars above you and…it felt almost like gravity had stopped working for a moment, you know? Like it wasn’t the engines keeping me airborne anymore but something else. I even checked in with home base, I thought my radio had given out, because of the silence.”

“Hm,” Rodney concurred softly, looking down at John’s hands that were grasped harder than they probably should have been around his beer can. Rodney wondered what else John thought about during those long, uneventful rides back on Earth but he didn’t know if he could bring it up. Any story could be told on the pier but some questions felt like they couldn’t be asked yet.

John snorted, causing Rodney’s eyes to dart up and get caught in the happy wrinkles around John’s eyes.

“I thought…hell, you can NOT make fun of me for this, alright?” he insisted, pointing an accusatory finger towards Rodney who smirked and sat up straighter in response.

“That depends on how stupid it is,” he retorted as he brought his beer up to his lips.

John rolled his eyes, chuckling some more. “I thought…that on one of those runs, at night, when I was meant to be invisible, undetectable…that I’d probably see a UFO.”

Rodney had been mid-sip and forced himself not to snort out all of the beer from his mouth, hand coming up to cover the frothing liquid as it both went up his nose and over his lips. He was snickering still as John yelled at him through his own laughs.

“Screw you, Rodney. Come on, you can’t tell me you never thought about that before you came here, of seeing aliens.”

Rodney nodded as he shook his hand, covered in beer, and swallowed down what was left in his mouth. “Of course I did! It doesn’t make it any less funny, you supposedly spying on Al-Qaeda for good-old-America but instead wondering if you’d see ET.”

“I hate you so much,” John said with a smile as he tipped his beer back, swigging the rest down.

“The feeling is mutual,” Rodney said with a snicker as he followed suit. The beer was still cold and he could feel the beginnings of that weird juxtaposition of chill in his throat and warmth on his cheeks (cheeks that also hurt from smiling so much and he didn’t know if he’d ever get used to that - how much he smiled now, how much John made him laugh).

When he brought the empty can down, he was keenly aware of a new sensation edging into his existence. 

All of a sudden, things seemed clearer. Rodney briefly wondered if the universe could actively manipulate perception or if maybe neurological functions took 30+ years to finally coalesce in a way that made you able to perceive patterns better. He looked over to John and was caught by intense hazel eyes looking back at him with the same odd perception. This was not usual, this looking long and hard at each other, but on the pier, during the witching hour, on a floating alien city in a galaxy far, far away, maybe they were allowed something extra.

Rodney was suddenly aware of how raw John looked, the wrinkles by his eyes, the slight grey growing into the hair at his temples, the tightness of his lips. He looked exhausted and worn out yet his eyes were soft and warm and they were exposed in a very unusual way. They looked at Rodney like he was something surprising and terrifying and all-together new.

“I always thought the universe was nothing but a cruel place,” Rodney whispered just above the breaking waves. He didn’t know if he could say ’…until I met you…’, if he could allow himself that, but he did allow himself to let out a breath when John’s head faintly nodded.

“Yeah, me too,” John whispered back and for at least that moment, Rodney really believed that the universe hadn’t lied to him for all of those years.

Maybe one day it would take it all back, maybe it would take John away from him for good, take away all of the happiness he had found in this foreign galaxy, but for that moment, the witching hour had given Rodney something he thought he’d lost forever - terrifying and exhilarating hope.


End file.
